


Speechless

by warqueenfuriosa



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Domestic, Domestic Fluff, Everybody Lives, F/M, Fluff, Gen, Happy Ending, May the Fourth Be With You!, Memorials, Morning Cuddles, One Shot, Reminiscing, Short & Sweet, Star Wars Day, Sweet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-04
Updated: 2018-05-04
Packaged: 2019-05-02 07:54:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14540175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/warqueenfuriosa/pseuds/warqueenfuriosa
Summary: When Jyn and Cassian wake up, they know what day it is. Their anniversary.But they don't celebrate it or talk about it. Instead, they look at each other and they know that every day they've had up 'til now is a miracle.





	Speechless

Light pressed against Jyn’s eyelids, far too bright, almost white, with a halo of gold encircling it.

She had seen light like that once before.

Her eyes remained closed, resolute. She didn’t need to witness for a second time what came afterwards.

She waited for the impact, the crush of her bones, the burn of her skin.

Warmth.

Not searing or blistering.

A warmth soft and gentle, enveloping every inch of her in a cotton cloud of dream-like haze. Fingers skimmed up from her bare hip, trailing aimlessly along her spine, accompanied by the steady rhythm of breathing that was not her own.

Cassian turned his head slightly towards her, his stubble coarse and rasping in comparison to the feathery touch of his lips against her forehead in a kiss.

_It’s today._

The thought lingered in the air, unspoken. This day began and ended in reverent silence.

It felt wrong to welcome it with a celebration, too loud and gaudy for the serenity of an impossible moment that didn’t seem like it belonged to them in the first place.

Six years later, a different planet to call home, the end of a war…many changes had whirled through their lives. And yet Jyn and Cassian still held their breath on this day. As if it wasn’t real to begin with. As if it would vanish if they dared to speak of it with fragile, precarious things like words.

Cassian’s fingers traced the curve of Jyn’s neck, gliding into her hair, cradling the back of her head.

Slowly, Jyn dragged her eyes open. Sunlight streamed in through the window at the foot of their bed, overlooking the forested moon. That’s what she had seen before, the golden-white light.

Not Scarif, on fire, a blazing path of destruction boiling towards her.

Just the early morning sun.

When Cassian found the little forested moon, there were barely fifty inhabitants peppered across the entire planet’s surface. The trees were undisturbed, massive giants, draped in trailing mosses. The wind rushed through the leaves overhead with a quiet sort of murmur that bore no resemblance to the deafening bedlam of war.

There were curtains at the window—a sweet, buttery yellow that seemed to illuminate the sunlight rather than dim it. Jyn could have risen, pulled them closed, and denied that the day was beginning. Cassian could have pulled them closed last night, knowing that tomorrow carried an onslaught of memories with it.

The curtains remained open.

Jyn could never bring herself to draw them shut. When she had built the tiny little box of a house with Cassian, she had insisted on windows. Big windows. Tall windows. Windows that could be flung open wide to welcome in a flood of fresh forest air.

Cassian had agreed, putting in so many windows that the walls were nearly entirely composed of glass.

Jyn had left many things behind—the farm on Lah’mu, Lyra’s final resting place, Galen’s body on that platform on Eadu—and for every one of them, it had broken her a little bit more to walk away.

But she was never so relieved as when the day she stood at the center of her small house with windows all around her, watching the tree tops sway in the wind, watching the birds pitch and dive as they soared on wings of freedom in the air, and she felt the sun on her face.

She had come a long, long way from that scared little girl, trapped in a hole in the ground, smothered by darkness.

Cassian, though, held reservations that he didn’t voice, not when he saw the happiness on Jyn’s face. But Jyn sensed those reservations and how exposed he felt, their house buried in the side of a cliff overlooking the trees. It was too visible. Not strategically sound at all.

It took Cassian a while to relax. He remained tense and watchful, searching the tree line and the skies for unwelcome guests or potential threats.

When nothing came for weeks, then months, then over two years, he finally nodded, sitting at the kitchen table, a cup of steaming caf in hand.

“This was a good idea,” he had said. “I like the windows.”

The sun greeted them every morning now, unhampered by curtains, and welcomed into their home to shine the shadows of nightmares away.

Cassian heaved a long, drawn out sigh of ease and contentment. Jyn felt it through her whole body—the rise and fall of his chest beneath her arm, the ruffle of his breath over the top of her head. She burrowed deeper into the crook of his neck and shoulder, seeking out more of his heat, as much as she could soak up.

On normal days, they didn’t linger like this often. There were things to do, friends to visit, and neither Jyn nor Cassian particularly enjoyed sitting still for very long.

But on this morning, it was always different. Normal things seemed…too holy to touch. Movement, no matter how insignificant and harmless, threatened to shatter the thin, delicate peace that shrouded them in a cocoon of warmth and light. Alive. Breathing. Constant heartbeats unwavering and strong.

Later on, Jyn and Cassian would finally dare to rise. Slowly. Carefully. Walking on tiptoe to the ‘fresher. Creeping into the kitchen for food. Getting dressed would take three times as long as necessary while fingers memorized each article of clothing. The simplicity of buttons would be transformed into a wonderous thing. The glide of fabric against skin and scars would leave a trail of goosebumps at the sensation.

Every mundane second so often taken for granted became magnificent in its grandeur.

All the while, the golden light would begin to fade. Long, blue shadows of returning nightfall would grasp and claw and writhe their way through the windows, across the floor, up the walls, staining Jyn’s sun-warmed skin with cold dark.

The first to arrive up the winding, twisting trail of the cliffside would be K-2SO. A few minutes later would be Bodhi, short of breath and sweating, but smiling all the same.

Chirrut and Baze would be the last to show, Baze’s arm over Chirrut’s shoulder, Chirrut’s fingers twisted into Baze’s shirt. They always came at the same time—just as the sun kissed the tops of the trees.

Together, as the sun slowly sank below the horizon, they would watch, all five of them, as the day came to an end.

Six years ago, this day had been hell on earth, a miracle and a nightmare rolled into one.

Six years later, this day became a memorial for those who never got a chance to see it.

But Baze and Chirrut, Bodhi and K-2SO, they wouldn’t arrive for hours yet. The sun was only beginning to rise now, freeing itself from the forest below.

Jyn nosed at Cassian’s neck and kissed the hollow beneath his ear—a chaste, quiet little kiss.

“We made it,” she whispered.

Cassian hummed and turned to look at her. Jyn propped herself up on one elbow to meet his gaze. Sunlight warmed her bare back, sheets pooled around her hips, as Cassian’s hand slipped around her waist.

That one word— _Scarif_ —lingered, waiting, and yet was never spoken. It had taken enough out of them, left behind more than a few marks of remembrance upon their bodies. It didn’t need their voices, too, especially now, after so much time had passed.

Cassian smiled, a small, private smile, only for her. He swept a lock of hair away from the corner of Jyn’s mouth, his knuckles brushing down the side of her neck, along her shoulder. He never grew tired of her skin in any way he could get it—her fingers twined with his, her ankle hooked around his calf.

Jyn was always with him in some way, drifting through his dreams as well as his nightmares, not to mention every waking thought. But to feel her beneath his hands, to watch her hair spill through his fingers like water, served as a reminder that she was real.

People like him didn’t get this kind of future. Long ago, he had resigned himself to the fact that his life would end in an early burial or a bomb, with chances more favorable towards the latter.

Nothing could prepare him for Jyn. For lazy mornings and unhurried caf, real caf with spices and sweetener instead of that bitter, sour brew from a powder-dry mix he had grown accustomed to.

Cassian swallowed as he cupped Jyn’s face in his hand. At times like this, he wondered when the roar of blaster fire would flood in again to drown him.

He didn’t wonder that now. The only thing he wondered was how he could be so lucky to wake up beside her.

“Happy anniversary, Jyn,” Cassian said, barely a breath between them, all of her pressed against all of him.

Other days—birthdays and holidays, engagements and graduations—were greeted with fanfare.

But this was the day that commemorated the survival of Jyn and Cassian.

And it was speechless with awe.


End file.
